So, big day today. Let's start from the beginning.
First, the hotel room was awesome except for one thing: the shower. The shower was pretty much the worst shower I've ever used. It was an ADA room which I only recently discovered means it complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. That's actually a pretty good thing for non-disabled persons like my wife and myself. The room is spacious (lots of room to accommodate wheelchairs) and there was a nice, big jacuzzi tub. The shower was one of the ones where you can detach the nozzle from the mount. I'm a fan of these because they're so versatile and they usually have awesome water pressure. I had one in my apartment in Singapore and it was awesome. This particular shower was decidedly not awesome, however.
Apparently this room only came with one shower temperature setting because no matter how far to the cool side we turned the nob the water was only barely cool enough to not completely strip our flesh from our bones. Eventually we did find a somewhat comfortable setting, the only problem then was that the water dribbled out so slowly that it was almost not enough to rinse soap off of skin, not to mention shampoo out of hair. I usually look forward to hotel showers, but I couldn't wait to get back to our crappy apartment shower after this morning.
After we got dressed and packed the woman at the front desk was nice enough to suggest, and even print-out a menu for, a delicious breakfast place on the Riverwalk. We started walking down there, but we stopped short because right out in front of the Alamo there was a festival/demonstration of some sort going on. We found out it was for the start of Hispanic Heritage Month, but that's not important. What is important is what we saw there.
That's right. That is a giant turtle dressed like some sort of Texas Ranger or something. Apparently San Antonio does not recognize the superior crime-fighting abilities of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and went with a more generic knock-off. It doesn't matter, I couldn't resist getting a picture.
After a delicious breakfast at a super crowded Riverwalk restaurant we got in the car and drove to Six Flags: Fiesta Texas!
I'm a big fan of amusement parks and roller coasters. I don't remember a time when I was scared of riding them or when they made me feel sick. As far as I can remember I've always loved them. I've got some family in San Antonio so I've been going to Fiesta Texas since before it was a Six Flags park.
We got to the park and it was not really crowded at all, which was shocking for a Saturday during a holiday weekend. We packed our towels, flip flops, sun screen, hand sanitizer, my wallet, phone and car keys in a back pack and headed into the park. The backpack was one that my wife earned a few years ago for raising over $1000 for a LiveStrong 5k she did. The backpack is important, so remember it.
We rode the newest rollercoast, the Goliath, first. It was so crazy fast that it was hard to even process what was going on, but it was a lot of fun. The cars sit four people wide and we rode next to a gay couple. They were singing "Hey, Jude" and my wife got a big response when she jumped in with the ending "JUDY, JUDY, JUDY, JUDY, JUDY, JUDY!"
We spent the next few hours riding some of our favorite rides and spending $31 on two extremely subpar "Johnny Rockets" burgers. Johnny Rockets, if you've never had it, is actually really good, but I guess the Six Flags version was striving to meet the level of normal amusement park food. Speaking of amusement park food, you know who has the best? The Kennedy Space Center. Their burgers were amazing and me and the wife ate for like $15. NASA has it figured out, but that's pretty obvious based on the fact that they can put people into space.
Anyway, we decided around 3pm or so to head to the water park where we would get a locker to keep our stuff in and cool down on some water rides. On the way we saw the Bugs Bunny log ride. Neither of us ever remembered riding it and since we were already in our swim suits we decided to just put our flip flops on and ride it before we went to the water park.
The log/cars don't stop, they just move past slowly and you have to jump in before it leaves. It probably takes 30 seconds from the time the let you on until it's too late to get in the log. I jumped across to the exit and set our backpack down where all the other bags were just like we'd been doing all day and just like I've done every time I've gone to any amusement park. As I turned to get in the log I remembered I had our camera in my pocket so I took it out and threw it on the ground behind the backpack and jumped back in the boat. My wife started getting worried that someone would steal the camera because it wasn't in the bag. I assured her the camera would be fine and we proceeded to enjoy the ride.
We got back to the loading area and I was right, the camera was right where I had left it, unfortunately our backpack was gone. One small piece of luck was that I had taken the cash and my debit card out of my wallet and put it in my pocket so I wouldn't have to keep getting into the backpack, so at least we had money, we just didn't have a cell phone, car keys, towels or our shoes.
I asked the attendant and of course he didn't know anything because they can't watch everything that gets left. We looked around the exit and didn't find anything. We hoped it was just a mistake and went up to lost and found, filled out a stolen report just in case and I used their phone to call my cell phone hoping whoever had it would hear it and realize they grabbed the wrong bag, all to no avail.
We decided to call a car open place to get into the trunk where my wife had our spare car keys in her purse luckily. About this time I figured the backpack had been stolen on purpose so I was a little afraid that my car would be gone before we could get into it, but it was still there when the guy came to open it for us.
We were pretty pissed and my wife was really upset to the point of crying for a little bit, but after we went back to the ride and checked a couple bathrooms around the area we decided we could either stay pissed or try to enjoy the rest of the day and keep checking back at lost and found until the park closed. At least there wasn't anything in the backpack that can't be replaced.
I called our bank and canceled the credit cards that were in my wallet and we spent the rest of the day riding rides. We rode the ferris wheel at dusk and got stuck at the top like all those pop-punk songs (or that one mc chris song). We even got to finally see some fireworks at the end of the night since there weren't any shows in Austin this 4th of July.
We had decided against eating at the park again, so after we left we found a place off the highway called Willie's Grill & Icehouse. It was a good choice because the food was about a hundred times better than what they had at Fiesta Texas. On a trip to the bathroom I noticed they had a Galaga machine so I got some quarters so we could play after dinner. Galaga is my wife's favorite game and the one and only game she destroys me on regularly. She stomped me by about 30,000 points, then she turned around and tried to win a little Iron Man plush out of a claw machine. I just kept shaking my head saying, "You've got to be kidding me! There's no way!" But there was a way and she was not kidding me because she won it on the first try. So maybe we can consider claw machines the other game she beats me at, because I'm pretty terrible at those too.
After that we drove home and went to sleep cause it was laaaaaaaaate, and that was the good ending to a pretty fun, but also kind of crappy day. I still haven't heard back about anyone finding or turning in our backpack, but to be honest I'm not holding out much hope. I ordered a new phone and I'm waiting on a new license. I'll be sure to update if anything changes because I know you're all holding your breath on this one.
I feel that if you read all of this very long post the picture should be self-explanatory. I'll just leave it at that.
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